David Vandervelde’s very clothes were ablaze that day in his Nashville basement. And the only thing that was ever going to put the flames out was laying “Learn How To Hang” to tape. How else does a song so immediate come to be? The repeated mantra of its title, set to an exhilarating, tightly-wound Buckingham lick, is just as much Far East philosophy as it is the most serious of stoner advice. It’s a self-effacing moment of clarity under the heat of a blowtorch. Same goes for its brother jam, “Wave Country,” with its galloping, sunburst metal and inner-bitch-slap hook, “You ain’t any cooler in the shade.” And how could we, in good conscience, ever sit on songs so immediate for any longer than one red-hot heartbeat? Some jams can’t simply be placed on a release schedule months in advance. Songs like these must be loaded in our bow and shot out into the world.

The wonderful people of FADER are on board as well. Today, FADER’s Sam Hockley-Smith said of “Learn How To Hang”: “It’s not that it’s too different from his previous material—it sometimes gets kinda glammy and sounds a lot like Fleetwood Mac on speed—but it’s that this time around it’s so fully realized. ‘Learn How to Hang’ is the kind of song that can transform one of those shitty nights when you’re staring into the bottom of the same beer for what seems like hours into a full on party where you stare into the bottom of a whole bunch of beers for what seems like minutes before you get another one. In other words: learn how to hang!”